ANIMISMO EN LOS RELATOS INFANTILES…

Introduction

In this chapter I will be discussing the methodological approaches employed in my investigation trying to understand the values and principles of Ethiopian Journalists. At the core of the investigation is assessing whether the current trend of journalism practices in the country would give effect to ethical journalism on the bases of the ethical foundations of the journalists toward their profession. In a way it also examines where the trend of journalism practices is heading in relation to responsible and ethical media practices. The following research questions are designed in order to get answers for the core problem under investigation;

1 What are the values and principles of Ethiopian journalists? 2 What do Ethiopian journalists think as their professional role?

3 How do they describe the current practices of journalism in Ethiopia in terms of media ethics? 4 What are their references to determine ethical behaviors? Do they have their own ethical codes?

5 If there are their own institutional codes, what are the common features and where do they differ?

6 What are their approaches to journalism ethics and how do they want to achieve it?

7 What are the factors that influence ethical journalism in the country and how do the journalists describe them?

In Ethiopia, journalism is mainly done at an individual level and institutionalizing journalism practices has still been at its infant stage. This is true especially for the private media. The public media in this regard is by far better than the private sector. In order to infer foundational values it is important to try and know how Ethiopian journalists ,both working in the country and from abroad ,select and process information within the context of perceiving, interpreting and giving meaning to matters of ethics in their profession. In other words description of journalists daily practices in relation to decisions made in every step of the way in their profession would give the best picture for the problem under investigation. The researcher believes that investigating the journalists mind so as to understand the way they perceive, interpret and giving meaning to their profession would lead to have the foundation for any effort to give effect to ethical and responsible journalism as it is always been advocated. We may better understand the communication processes of ethical norms and values too. The direction I am following in my research focus could put me with those who argue that journalism research would be incomplete without the focus on understanding what is going on in the minds of journalists. (Wilbur

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Schramm, 1971, Seth Geiger and John Newhagen, 1993 and Bu Zhong, 2006).These authors believe that media research traditionally focused on messages in terms of the content of the message and the program genres dictated by the media. Zhong (2006) goes even further and mentions cognitive scientists claim quoting (Newell, 1990) that ‗all human decisions are made by mind, which is, in essence, a control system that guides the behaving organism in its complex interactions with the dynamic real world.‘(Zhong 2006, 10)

Based on the core idea of what is stated above, the methodological approaches are chosen and designed in a way that best suits to finding the right answers for the research questions that are framing the problem under investigation.

One of the questions that frame the core of this project is looking at how news stories are chosen, written and got published by journalists who are working in Ethiopia and those who are working for the web from abroad. Here it should be noted that the news stories that are treated in this study as news at the web from abroad are referring to websites that are run by Ethiopians living outside of their country and practicing journalism targeting Ethiopians in their homeland and Diasporas as well. And trying to get answers for this question is believed to reveal values, norms and principles informing the news decisions made.

As part of their reflections on the way they make news decisions, their views were also investigated in relation to the political atmosphere they are working in. By political atmosphere it is to mean the political influences on the journalism practices of a country. To borrow Joseph Turols (2010) description he said;

"Political influences refer to the types of power those officials exert. The leaders of some countries have more power to impose their will over their nation‟s institutions than do the leaders of other countries. A dictator with a strong army to enforce his orders will typically be able to exert more direct control over his country‟s television stations and newspapers than a dictator who does not yet feel strong enough to pull every aspect of his society under his control." Turols (2010:87)

The basic assessment point with regard to political environment for this research is trying to draw the relationship between freedoms of the press, the way the political environment is handling it and its impact on ethical journalism.

There are two groups of journalist here, Ethiopian in the country and the Diaspora journalists. Each of these groups is working in a different political environment. Most of the Diaspora journalists are living and working in the western world where the liberal view of freedom of expression is in its full power. On the other hand the journalists working in Ethiopia are in a controversial political environment in its conveniences for freedom of the press. This paper is not endorsing any views that Ethiopia currently is under authoritarian regime or not. That is not the objective of this paper. But it has taken many complaints from international and local journalism advocates and individual journalists and chose to have a theoretical framework that would help

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explain the problem under investigation by considering both the liberal and authoritarian view of freedom of the press. How does it look like journalism produced in a liberal world and send to the authoritarian regime by people originally from the latter but living and working in the former? On the other hand since the Diaspora journalists are targeting Ethiopians consumers for their products, their take on and practical happenings on the domestic political environments that are impacting their job will have also been evaluated. Questions like how does the regime want to suppress you and how do you manage to reach your audiences makes up the assessment. In addition the relationship between the legal and political systems and journalism ethics in the eyes of the journalists in action, how one is influencing the other add up to one of the research questions trying to giving answers for the core problem of this project. In doing so figuring out the shared ethical values and principles of journalism between the domestic and the Diaspora media do have a significant contribution for this study. To put it differently the conceptions by the liberal political environment as the role of the media to provide the public with all sorts of information so that the public has the ability to take what it chooses and ignore what it doesn‘t versus the authoritarian outlook of the media being a development agent and educator of the society was assessed from the point of view of the journalists how it is influencing their perception and practices of ethical journalism. Market influences have also taken a place in this study as part of assessing factors influencing journalists‘ practices. Sources with different social power instances dominantly used by journalists for their daily job would also be seen and get analyzed as a way of assessing its possible impact on journalists‘ conceptions of ethics.

The rules and ethical codes meant for governing journalism practices in the country have also been investigated within the context of individual journalist reflection on them and the meanings they are given to them.

Identifying how the journalists think their values develop in their mind was also part of the research questions. These factors would help better understand norms and values that are dominating the Ethiopian media.

Investigating the decision processes of cases that could put ethical dilemmas in media organizations have also been chosen to make up to the research questions. This could help strengthen the validity of the research. Because it gives chances of comparing and contrasting what is being thought and actually practiced.

Value hierarchies are also other areas of investigations that add to the research questions. Studying the hierarchies could also provide opportunities to have a deeper insight into how journalists seek to identify what is worthy of journalism works in general and news stories in particular. It also gives ideas to locate where the journalists stand in terms of what they think the role of journalism could or should be, be it in their society or elsewhere.

The status of the contents produced by the journalists seen by the mirror of ethical standards makes the other question for this project. Traditional journalism values as opposed to the

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Diaspora journalist have also been treated in this research. The Diaspora journalists are chosen for they are using the new technology (internet) as their major tool to practice journalism.

Another point to be taken into account from this dissertation is the importance of questioning journalists on their awareness on the role of their profession in influencing the mental and social health of their consumers.

Most of the emphases here is basically on individual journalists and their perceptions and interpretations of values and principles for it is believed to be playing a major role in influencing content of journalistic works. As Gans (1979) and Gitlin (1980) put it in a category of communicator-centered approach, media content is influenced by journalists‘ socialization and attitudes as formed by psychological, personal, political, and professional attitudes intrinsic to the individual journalist. In the same line with this claim Donsbach (2004, 135) as quoted by Bu Zhong (2006) argues that the subjective beliefs of journalists are also believed to exert considerable influence on news decisions. ‗There is sufficient evidence that a journalist‘s predispositions toward an issue or an actor can affect his or her news decisions‘ (Donsbach, 2004, 135). Journalists‘ description of their news decision making and their fellow journalists have also been raised as a show case in point. (Bu Zhong, 2006)

The assumption to choose the right methodological approach is basically based on the idea that in order to best understand the moral foundations of Ethiopian journalists in relation to ethical practices of journalism one has to try to understand why and how decisions are made by journalists on the final products of their work which is story production. As Robert A. White (n.d, 43 ) puts it ‗…..to understand what foundational motivations are providing reasons for consistently following ethical norms, one must observe journalists in action and understand their reasons for choosing one set of news stories rather than others or their reasons for interpreting a public event in a particular way‘.

In summary this study aims at investigating journalists‘ themselves perspectives on the issue of ethics. It tried to explore the journalists own articulation or description of ethical values, principles and standards in a way it helps comprehensively understand the ethical landscape of Ethiopian journalism from within the country and abroad. It tried to get answers ranging from hierarchies of values and principles to choices made to ethical dilemmas. It also explores stand points of journalists for controversial issues of ethical journalism in the country and rules and regulations including ethical codes and others meant for self governing standards. The contents of a certain period publications within the context of figuring out the possible disparities and similarities with the actual belief and perceptions, understandings and meanings given to ethical values and principles have also been reviewed.

In all levels of this research project efforts are made to discuss the ideologies which frame interpretations of journalism values and ethical codes by Ethiopian journalists.

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Theoretical explanations from journalism and philosophy of ethics and morality are used to explore the conceptual shortfalls of the current journalism and journalism ethics in Ethiopian Journalism. As Rhonda Breit (2004) used such an approach to investigate the effects of ethical codes in ethical journalism practices in Australia, this research followed suit the same approach with a difference in the core emphases given. She focused on ethical codes and organizational structures while this research focused on individual journalists. And I totally agree with Rhonda Breit in that looking for a better practice of ethical journalism in a nation, theoretical framework will be needed to understand and evaluate the actual practice of journalism which is underway. In fact she used the argument for only evaluating the capacity of a system of self regulation to encourage ethical journalism. But I do believe that it also helps evaluate the individual journalists‘ value systems and its impact on ethical journalism too. My view goes with the idea that ‗Existence of ethics codes cannot be a guarantee for the existence of attitude and perceptions of the journalists working for the institution with such codes. Sometimes it was learnt that there are times whereby the journalists are not even aware of the codes in their institution in the first place‘ (Wotruba, Chonko, and Loe (2001) in Barnett, Tim (2003, 1). In order to capture what is discussed the major instrument employed is in depth interviews with the journalists themselves who are at editors level where the final decisions are made and conducting survey for the rest of the journalists. All the journalists' responses to get their decisions and reasons for the decisions they made on cases possibly leading to ethical dilemmas were also gathered .Contents of certain period publications on the same topic across the media landscape in the country and abroad in the web were also reviewed as a supplement for the investigation. In addition technical literatures like, meeting proceedings, rules and regulation documents, policy documents, meeting recordings, articles published, interviews of journalists on different media outlets and discussion panels held on issues of journalism in the country were also used to supplement the research tools employed for a more comprehensive understanding of the problem under investigation. In summary these tools are adding to the triangulation of the method. Basically it is interpretive qualitative research method which is informing this project. And it is through the grounded theory approach which is planned to reach at the core aim of the investigation.